To Be Cold
by Proserpine in the Underworld
Summary: Gormenghast...Fuchsia and Steerpike go up on the roof...
1. On the Roof

This is my first Gormenghast fic, it's basically just Fuchsia and Steerpike. You know. If you haven't read the books, there are no spoilers and I think you could still follow it. If you haven't seen the BBC Miniseries, I definitely recommend it…Jonathan Rhys Meyers is utopian (ooh, my vocab is so posh) as Steerpike. Please R/R, I want to get Gormenghast established as a Fanfic Book category, so I need feedback. J I hope you like it. It's very…angsty? Poetical? I dunno, just read the fic!

To Be Cold

To be cold, and great, tall, imperious and beautiful and granite-hewn and look down and without words deplore or love beyond sea or star…

Fuchsia wrote, and knew her words were truth and were right and one day she would be it. Perhaps, perhaps, when Titus grew…

But she was interrupted by the creeping of someone into the room, and she flung around to face the only person who would bother _creeping_ into her room. 

Steerpike stared, intense. His face was hard like ice and as cold. She shivered and asked him what he wanted. He looked into her eyes in that way of his,  "Only the company…of the Lady Fuchsia…"

He still made her nervous at times. She sat down on her bed and he followed, graceful and yet stealthy, like a tiger. She had heard people call him hunchback, upstart, brat, kicked by Swelter one too many times—she heeded none of it. He was _Steerpike._

He looked at her sidelong, through the angular bones of his cheek and smiled a slow smile. Fuchsia wondered if he practiced it in his own room, that measured, crafty smile. 

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing…" He trailed off and leaned back against the bed-post. 

The sheets, blanket and coverlet were rich maroon, thickly embroidered with gold and seed pearls, and Fuchsia liked to make the most of this by twisting them into long, coiled snakes which writhed when she jumped on the bed. They lay there until she unraveled them in the evening, and then they were pleasantly wrinkled. Also it was easier than actually making the bed. 

"Come on, what is it?" She coaxed. 

"I'm going to the roof." And he jumped up, extending a hand to her. She took it. 

The roof was huge and endless, sometimes gently sloping, or flat like a great black plain, lined by drainage for rain. The sun was mellow in a greyish sky, and the air cool. Autumnal, though summer still hung moist in the air. 

Steerpike went to the very edge and sat, his legs hanging over. Fuchsia sat down as well. All around were the buildings of Gormenghast, grey-brown, greenish with moss and ivy and huge. Home. 

Steerpike looked across at her, and she frowned slightly. 

Why was he always doing that, looking at her? Since he had appeared from the kitchens almost a year ago, he often crept into her room to smile at her sidelong and say mysterious things. He crept into her head, into her diary, into her sleep even. Long, deep sleep, treading warm the warm waters of her dreams…

The wind blew her black hair out behind her, and her dark eyes were fixed on him. He reached out a pale hand and long, slender fingers brushed away a piece of hair which had blown across her clear, round face. His eyes were greyish, flecked with blue shards as sharp as the North wind.

He took his hand away, and with it went his North-wind eyes, back to green-brown-grey Gormenghast. She sighed. His face turned back to hers suddenly. 

"Lady Fuchsia?"

She snapped her eyes to his, "Steerpike?"

His angular face seemed to lean in and when he spoke, it was the sound of a tiger yawning or a volcano purring, "I was about to say something…" 

She was shivering and bold in a grey ocean and could not answer.

"But I've forgotten now…" And he was swimming through ink, and could not remember. 

The wind blew cool, blew the leaves up from the forests far around, blew rays of helios through the clouds. 

And still Fuscia watched his blue-green waves, and still Steerpike wandered in the night-forests of her eyes…and they wondered, what now?


	2. Sleep

Hey people J Thanks to Magentagirl15, iameviltara, CrimsonFuchsia and Nicolette for the great reviews, they totally made my day! Here's chapter II…

Sleep 

The low clouds had rolled back to pile in the corners of the sky, where they rumbled with a sullen purple thunder. The moon had swelled up from behind the hills and hung against the boulevard of stars, grey-cratered. 

Fuchsia was at her window, and her face was luminous in its light. She sighed a long, resigned breath and looked out. Spectator. As always. She sighed again and turned away. 

The wind was whispering between the sleeping stones, whistling high through the shingle-splinter turrets and then blowing woodwind-low across the tops of soot-wise chimneys. 

Fuchsia took out one of her notebooks, and, stretched upon her bed, began to write. _A_ _mind of diamond edges and inscrutable angles, ice embodied in cheekbones, the browbone glacial, lips set in permafrost_. 

Eventually she slept, round cheek on her arm, hair fanned out like so many raven feathers. The candles sputtered lower and she wandered through the uneven pathways of her own head and breathed the mild air. 

In he crept—stealthy as the jungle cat, silent as settled dust. 

He sat, lean as the sapling, on the edge of the bed and watched her, his eyes coming to rest on the notebook. He read one page, a slow and calculating smile spreading over his smooth face. 

He bent forward so that his lips were next to her ear. He inhaled her warm skin and her hair, heavy lavender. He paused, considering—and then said her name, his voice low and breathy. She stirred. He said it again, "Fuchsia. Lady Fuchsia."

She woke with a start, so that he had to raise his head quickly to avoid being hit in the mouth. She sat up quickly and stared at him, eyes unfocused, bewildered. 

His face was open, and his pupils widened and the smile spread again, like a rift in the earth—his surface lips crumbling back, the teeth of limestone and granite, and the tongue of magma core. 

Fuchsia sat transfixed, her eyes wide as innocence and her cheeks pink as sunrise and her heart expanding like the galaxy. 


End file.
